The City of Saint Paul’s Office of Financial Empowerment and researchers from the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work are partnering with Pan Atlantic Research to conduct the CollegeBound Boost Demonstration Study.
Study Purpose
Starting in 2020, all babies born in Saint Paul received a savings account from the City as part of a new program called “CollegeBound Saint Paul.” We are contacting you because your child was born on or after January 1, 2020 and has one of these accounts. The City of Saint Paul is testing new and innovative strategies to provide additional financial supports to families. You may be eligible to participate depending on your address and household income.
If you agree to participate in this study, you will be randomly assigned to one of three groups for 24 months.
You will be assigned to one of these three groups:
1. Additional deposits in your child’s CollegeBound Saint Paul account ($250 each quarter for 12 months for a total of $1,000); or
2. Additional income of $500 a month for 24 months plus additional deposits of $250 each quarter for 12 months in your child’s CollegeBound account; or
3. Continue to be in CollegeBound Saint Paul with the current $50 seed deposit and opportunities to earn bonuses.
Compensation
No matter what group you are randomly assigned to, all participants in CollegeBound Boost will have the opportunity to earn $120 in gift cards. You will receive a $40 pre-paid VISA gift card for participating in the study, and will receive additional $40 gift cards after completing surveys at 12 and 24 months after enrolling in the study.
Within a week, you will receive a follow-up email or call from Pan Atlantic Research with additional instructions based on the group to which you have been randomly assigned. Please watch your inbox for emails from collegeboundboost@panatlanticresearch.com.
Once annually (about 12 and 24 months after you begin participating in the study), we will contact you to complete a 15-minute survey about your experiences and other information about you and your child’s well-being, your expectations for your child’s education, and how you are planning for the future. For example, we may ask questions like How far do you expect your child will go in school? or Is your
family currently saving for your child’s future education?
Some questions might be sensitive in nature. For example, we may ask questions about economic pressure like My family has enough money to afford the kind of home we need, or questions about mental health like how often you felt sad or lonely in the past month. You do not have to answer any questions that are too sensitive for you; you can skip any questions on the survey.
After completion of each survey, you will receive another $40 pre-paid VISA from the University of Michigan.
So that we can complete this study, the information from your survey will be linked by a unique identifier to information about your participation in this study and your child’s CollegeBound Saint Paul account. Specifically, we will obtain all CollegeBound Saint Paul program data such as date you logged into the portal, type and amount of all deposits, and other data related to your interactions with CollegeBound Saint Paul programming. This includes all data from interactions and deposits that result from any of the study groups.
Benefits
Your participation will help us better understand how to develop or improve city programs to enhance the well-being of children and families in Saint Paul. We may also try to contact you again in the future for additional follow-ups. If that happens, you will be offered an additional incentive.
Risks
Your participation in this study involves minimal-to-no risk. However, any time you share information, there is a risk of accidental disclosure. The research team uses strict data security procedures, ensuring this risk is very small.
Participation in this study is voluntary. If you decline to participate, there will be no penalty to you and there will be no effect on your relationship with the City of Saint Paul or any of its programs. You may skip any question(s) on the survey and may stop participating in the study at any time without penalty. If you do stop participating in the study, you will still have the opportunity to fill out the survey in 12 and 24 months and receive additional $40 Visa gift cards.
Researchers will protect your information in several ways. Any identifying information such as names and dates of birth are removed as soon as possible and replaced with a study-generated identifier. All information is stored on secure, password protected servers. Only project team members with special permission are allowed to see the data. No one from the City of Saint Paul will be able to access your
survey data.
Who will have access to my research records?
University, study sponsors or funders, auditors, and/or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) may need the information to make sure that the study is done in a safe and proper manner.
What will happen to the information collected in this study?
The information you share in order to determine your eligibility for this study (address, child’s date of birth, relationship to child, and benefits and income information), will be shared with the City of Saint Paul to enroll you in CollegeBound Boost. Your individual survey responses are not shared with the City of Saint Paul. We only report survey responses as a group.
We will keep the information we collect about you during the research for future research projects. Your name and other information that can directly identify you will be stored securely and separately from the research information we collect from you. Any link between the study-generated identifier and your identifying information will be removed as soon as possible after surveys are complete. The researchers may contact you again in one and two years as part of this project. The results of this study could be published in an article or presentation, but will not include any information that would identify you.
Will my information be used for future research or shared with others?
The current best practice to advance research is to allow future research teams to verify and test what was learned by this research team. We follow this best practice. We protect your privacy by first removing anything that might identify you. Future studies can then proceed without additional informed consent from you.
Who can I contact about this study?
Please contact the researchers listed below to:
- Obtain more information about the study
- Ask a question about the study procedures
- Report an illness, injury, or other problem (you may also need to tell your regular doctors)
- Leave the study before it is finished
- Express a concern about the study
Principal Investigator: William Elliott, PhD
Email: parent.survey@umich.edu
Phone: (toll-free) 1-833-842-1248
If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, or wish to obtain information, ask questions or discuss any concerns about this study with someone other than the researcher(s), please contact the following:
University of Michigan
Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board (IRB-HSBS)
2800 Plymouth Road
Building 520, Room 1169Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2800
Telephone: 734-936-0933 or toll free (866) 936-0933
Fax: 734-936-1852
E-mail: irbhsbs@umich.edu
University of Michigan Compliance Hotline at 1-866-990-0111.
By filling out the information below, you are consenting to participate in this study. Please fill out this information completely so that your eligibility for the study can be determined.
A research team member from Pan Atlantic Research will contact you by email, text or phone after you submit this form to (1) let you know whether you qualify to participate in this study, and (2) ask you to confirm your participation in the study. If you do not qualify for this study, you will receive an email notification from the City of Saint Paul.
If you are unable to complete this information online, please contact Pan Atlantic Research at 651-356-8068 to provide your information by phone.